As you may have already heard, my friend AnneMarie of Gen X Quilters recently added a new member to her family! She had a rough, uncomfortable pregnancy, so Elizabeth, Amy and I decided to get together and surprise her with a little something for the baby. I’m guessing her new little man has plenty of quilts, but you can always use another one made by friends, right? : )

We decided on some basic, bright-colored, fun log-cabin blocks. Each of us made three blocks, and I quilted it.

I put some of my favorite little-boy prints on the back—the brown and blue plaid from Katie Jump Rope, a Pezzy print, and a few others.

I’ve been wanting to improve my straight-line quilting, so I opted for straight lines on the diagonal across the quilt. I recently got a new walking foot that has this quilting guide on it—why didn’t I know about this little doohickey before?? It makes straight-line quilting so much easier, no marking necessary! I just marked the center diagonal and used the guide to work my way out from there. The only problem with using a quilting guide like this is if you get a little crooked or curvy on one line, all the lines after that will be the same, because you’re always using the previous line as your guide. In fact, the flaws might even be magnified as you stitch more and more lines. So I sometimes took the quilt off my machine, laid it out on the floor and inspected my lines. If they were looking a little crazy, I marked the next line in order to straighten things out again. But I only had to do that 3 or 4 times, I’d say.

And it turns out that I really don’t mind straight-line quilting—as long as I don’t have to turn the darn quilt! It’s the turning that I despise. So you may see more edge-to-edge straight-line quilting from me in the future.

Congratulations, AnneMarie, on the addition to your family! Enjoy the quilt!

To make straight quilting lines and not mess with the channel guide, just use a Hera marker to "draw" lines on your quilt, marking along the edge of your longest ruler. In fact, that's the way to free-motion quilt straight lines on my quilts, following the Hera-marked line. That way too, there's no need to do any quilt turning at all.

This is such a generous gift to a friend and who wouldn't love to receive this in the mail to celebrate the birth of a child. I use my guide on my even-feed foot all the time–so glad you found it. Every once in a while I'll bump it, so sometimes I put a little bit of masking tape to secure it in line. I agree with the echoing of wobbly lines–but the other fun thing about taking off the quilt is to admire all the fine work that has gone into (and is going into) a quilt like this.